I says to my wife, I says: ”Let`s try it. Let`s see if this stuff really works.”
”OK,” she says, ”How do we proceed?”
Proceed, she says. OK, my wife is pregnant. It`s our first. She`s going a little stir-crazy, right? So I`m trying to be nice about it, come up with a little something to occupy her time. One of the guys at work came in with this book on ESP and stuff like that, and we spent half the lunch hour doing experiments.
It works like this: There are these perforated detachable pages in the back of the book with different shapes on them. Like one`s a star and one`s a circle and one`s a square, see. So you take them out and shuffle them like cards. You choose one, right, then one guy sits and stares at it. The other guy makes his mind a blank. Then he tells whatever shape comes into his mind. Another version: the guy who does the sending draws something, and the other guy tries to draw what it was. The guys liked it better with the cards; you don`t always have to be thinking things up. We tended to hit it right about one time in every four or five, but Eduardo, the Puerto Rican loader, he would sometimes get two or three in a row. OK, I explain this all to my wife. ”Fine,” she says.
”Fine what?”
”Fine. Let`s try it.”
”We`ll have to make up cards,” I say.
”No,” she says.
”No what?”
”The other way.”
By which she means we draw pictures.
I take out a memo pad from work, Zugarelli Distributors. Zugarelli is a fish distributor, but his logo is a little truck. That`s not good enough, she says, the heading and the little truck logo are distracting, we need plain white paper. So, OK. Where are we gonna get white paper? It turns out she has it, thick grainy white paper that you can sort of slightly see a letter or something in it, like a vision test. What is she doing with white paper?
”I`ll sit at the kitchen table and send,” I say. ”You can lie on the bed. Rest your stomach,” I say as an afterthought.
”I`ll send,” she says.
So I sit at the kitchen table and try making my mind into a blank. You try it. All of a sudden I`m thinking of everything. Some of them are dumb things, some of them are things I wouldn`t tell anybody if my life depended on it. I`m thinking about Miss Farrell, this blond who works in the dispatcher`s office, who really has no chest but all the guys mess around and say wiseassed things to her. I think about disgusting things like the half load of fish that got left in a truck over Labor Day or the thing that I did once as a kid at summer camp.
To fight that off, I start thinking of objects in the kitchen-the blender, for one; the oven, which has one clogged gas cock I promised to fix; the broom and all the stuff it has probably touched; the toaster. None of this seems like stuff she is likely to be sending.
Then I think of the vacuum cleaner, which is the thing she loves most in the world. Her father gave it to her, no occasion. She loves it. I mean it`s like her best friend. Whenever things are a little slow, she gets it right out and vroom, vroom. On it goes like a dental drill whenever I`m watching a ballgame or trying to take a nap. When I have a couple of friends over, she practically vacuums them out the door.
When it first arrived, I threw a fit. Her father is this self-made-type guy who puts laundry machines in the basements of housing projects. Thanks to this brilliant business idea of the decade, he`s well on the way to his first million. She thinks that makes it OK to accept expensive gifts. I tell her we`re at the point where we are supposed to be trying to establish ourselves. So one day the vacuum cleaner arrives. She says the baby makes her back hurt. She needs the vacuum cleaner, and that`s that.
OK, I draw the vacuum cleaner.
What she draws, get this, is her ”angel.” That`s what she calls this little night light that she used to have on her bedstand at her folks` house. As far as I know, it`s still there. As far as I can see, it`s just an ordinary night light, for hangovers and when you can`t sleep. She thinks it watches over her or something. It`s supposed to have been manufactured by underground monks for the Vatican gift shop or something, some such story. It probably has MADE IN KOREA stamped on the baseplate; I never turned it over to check.
She puts her picture of the night light next to my drawing of the vacuum cleaner. ”Sorry,” she says. ”No dice.”
”Now hang on a minute,” I say. ”I wouldn`t be so fast. I think my drawing looks a little like your angel. They both have electrical attachments, for one thing.”
”Not a chance,” she says.
”And the vroomer thing. Look at the vroomer thing. I think if you fuzz your eyes a little bit, it looks like the base plate of your night light.”
”I`m sorry,” she says. ”The two objects just don`t resemble one another.”
Resemble one another. HO-kay. She puts the papers down like that, takes care of this game; it has flopped. She`s had enough of this dumb stuff. She isn`t interested. ”Let`s change places,” I say. ”I think we`ve got some of this ESP stuff, you and me. I honestly think we have it.”
She doesn`t change expression. She picks the paper back up and gives me a clean sheet.
I sit down again at the kitchen table. Now that I don`t want my mind to be a blank, guess what? A blank, of course. Not a blank exactly. There are things in it, but they are entirely stupid things like the pattern in the linoleum or the dark goo that collects in the cracks. The way a crack in the wall plaster divides off like a river. Nothing sendable. Nothing important enough to draw. I realize that whatever I draw ought to be me. I mean, it will be the first thing I have ever sent by ESP. It`s going to represent me in my wife`s eyes, so to speak.
All of a sudden everything in my life seems either too obvious or just too dumb. The trucks at Zugarelli, for instance. That wouldn`t show any imagination. I mean, I`m in and out of the trucks all day, loading them, getting them out. What do the trucks have to do with me? They`re what I do for a living, for Christ`s sake. They just happened to roll into my life.
The same thing with the fish. Zugarelli is mainly wholesale fish, also crabs and lobsters. Old Man Zugarelli got the idea about 15 years ago that one of these days people were going to eat a lot more fish, and was he ever right. In restaurants, especially, although we also deliver to a couple of the grocery chains. Now Zugarelli is well on his way to his first million, and the two guys that started out with him have a good quarter mil in their retirement plans. All on dead fish. There is nothing heavier than a dead fish, but as cargoes go, they are fairly stable, not like flowers or oranges.
There`s that load of dead fish, of course, which I secretly suspected Eduardo had forgotten. How do you draw the smell of rotted fish? Anyway, fish are Zugarelli`s idea. I`m not sending fish, I decide. I come home smelling like them is enough. I`ll draw a dead fish when I`ve made my first million out of them.
What I draw is an old roadster. I saw one of them the other day when I was delivering down in Streeterville. I was stuck behind a horse and buggy, which they have down there for tourists, and up the other way comes this old car out of the 1920s or something.
The guy driving it is wearing a straw hat. I have no idea where he might be going. It`s all waxed and polished, though, including the chrome, and he looks like he`s having a hell of a good time. I wouldn`t have any use for a horse and buggy, but I decided on the spot that when I get my first million, I`m getting one of those old roadsters.
I drew the old roadster. I put a driver in it, with a straw hat on. I added goggles. ”Ready,” I call out.
She comes swishing in.
She has drawn a bicycle. It`s not half bad. Somebody is sitting on it, and I realize it`s her. It`s a cartoon of her. It`s this very pregnant woman in a kind of bonnet like the Puritans wore; it`s her. The bicycles are another bone of contention. They were given to us unassembled by one of her father`s friends who is a bicycle importer. Made in Timbuktoo to mess up the American mind. We had one of our worst arguments the day I had to put them together.
”Let`s look at this now,” I say cautiously. ”We`re talking wheeled goods here. I see a definite similarity.”
”I drew a person on a bicycle,” she says. ”A contemporary bicycle. There are two just like it in the basement. You drew an antique car.”
”We`re talking wheeled vehicles, here,” I say. ”We`re talking people moving from left to right across the page.”
”Everything moves from left to right across the page,” she comes back. ”That`s how the eye moves. That`s how writing moves. Unless you`re Chinese.”
Chinese. ”We own bicycles,” I remind her. ”I was thinking of an antique car, you mistook it for the bicycles. We`ve got bicycles in the basement.”
”I`m aware of the fact that we have bicycles. I`m also aware that we never ride them.”
Never ride them. ”I know they`re there, though. They`re in the basement.”
”Were you in the basement today?” she wants to know.
”For Christ`s sake,” I say. ”Were you in the basement today? What does the basement have to do with it? OK, you don`t believe. Let`s do one more.”
She puts up a little bit of a fight, but finally she agrees.
This time I take no chances. I decide to draw one of the symbols out of the book. What I draw is a star. It`s a neat, five-sided star, which is a lot harder than with six sides. I`m very careful about it. When I`m done, I call her in, but she says wait. She isn`t ready. About 10 minutes later she comes in.
Get this: She has drawn Michael.
M.J.
Jordan.
She has drawn him driving for a layup, or, excuse me, a dunk. When I was in school, we shot layups, right, but now layups aren`t good enough, a layup can miss, right, so it`s got to be a dunk. So there`s Jordan, going through the air, his legs tucked under him like landing gear. He`s getting ready to slam the ball.
The thing is, she`s got it right.
I mean, the uniform is right, and you can see bits of the number on his back. He`s bald as an eagle and even though you can only see the side of his face, you can tell there`s this incredible concentration. She`s got the legs and arms too. The angle of the arms is exactly right, and the legs-well, maybe there`s a little exaggeration, like a cartoon, but she`s got them. He`s hanging there completely still, but you can also feel him moving, just the way it is when he does it. There`s no hoop in the drawing and no backboard, but you can feel that they are there. There`s no floor either, unless it`s the bottom of the paper.
I don`t know what to say. ”Nice,” I finally say.
She doesn`t say anything. Just stands and admires her drawing of Jordan.
She doesn`t even seem to notice the star.
”I don`t get it,” I say.
”Get what?”
”Jordan. Why Jordan?”
”He`s nice,” she says.
Nice, for crying out loud. ”What do you mean nice?”
”On television. He`s very sincere.”
”Those are commercials, for crying out loud. He`s being paid about a guzillion bucks to look sincere.”
She just shrugs.
”So when did you learn to draw like that?”
”I don`t know,” she says.
”You never drew anything before.”
”I drew,” she informs me. ”I took art at school. The teacher told me I had talent. He thought I ought to go on with it.”
”I see,” I say. ”Then he made the big pass at you, right?” I laughed.
”Ha, ha.”
I look at the drawing again. What gets me about it is the way it is perfectly still. Jordan is just hanging there. She`s got the muscles right. You can almost see the little bit of sweat clinging to his skin. You can practically reach out and touch him.
”So since when are you such a big basketball fan?” I ask.
”I don`t know,” she says again.
”I don`t get it,” I say. ”You don`t know anything about basketball. I bet you don`t even know how to set a pick. Right?”
”I just think it`s beautiful,” she says. ”When they pass the ball around or Jordan hangs in the air. It`s like dance.”
Like dance, for crying out loud. She takes a step back and smiles, like she is satisfied with herself. I keep staring at the drawing.
”I drew a star,” I say. ”Get it? Jordan is a star.”
She snorts.
”Seriously. I thought, star. You thought, Jordan.”
”You drew a geometric shape,” she says.
”Did I say something about basketball at dinner?”
”No. Not that I can remember.”
”Did you hear me watching a game on TV? Yesterday, maybe? Maybe a couple days ago?”
”Not that I can recall.”
”Do you think it`s one of those things where, you know, you`re thinking about something and you don`t know you`re thinking about it?”
”I don`t know.” She`s being very cool. ”No, I don`t think so.”
She steps back and smiles, the kind of smile that is strictly between herself and herself. In her picture, Jordan looks like this terrific racehorse or something. I mean every muscle straining to tear through the skin. He looks like this incredible animal that is about to explode. I stare at it for a long time.
”I don`t get it,” I finally say. ”I drew a star. I wasn`t thinking of Jordan at all.”
